


So Many Flavors

by SandrC



Series: Balance My Deeds With My Misdeeds [42]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Casual necromancy, Extended Us verse, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-20
Updated: 2018-09-20
Packaged: 2019-07-14 13:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16041281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandrC/pseuds/SandrC
Summary: These flavors of personality areHindering my likeabilityMy impulsive desire, my appetite hasSpoiled my urge to satisfy(Or: I have feelings about Barry and I will murder for him.)





	So Many Flavors

**Author's Note:**

> Took forever but I'm here. Yay me!
> 
> Barry is my boy and I love him. I live all iterations of him. I also explicitly refused to retouch on him being trans here because it didn't seem to matter. More his work and fear of forgetting.
> 
> Anyway, next is Davenport, then Lucretia. I promise nothing in terms of updates. They'll happen eventually. Like now, when I should be working on Second Star! But I'm not, so here we are.
> 
> Hope this continues to satisfy.

Sildar Hallwinter is an exception to the rule that necromancy is used for evil only. In fact, if you asked him, he'd say that the so-called _rule_ was based on a stigma that never survived the Second Calling. Necromancy is a hedge magic now. A folk-craft.

Sildar Hallwinter is a farmer by birth, the oldest of seven on their well-respected ranch just outside of Tre-Llew Ddion. He takes care of large crops of mandrake and wheat, herds of cows and coops of chickens. He keeps the ranch running when his parents are gone.

He's the local necromancer too, and that helps his reputation by leaps and bounds.

 _Every_ farming area has a necromancer. It's useful, despite the supposed illegality of it all. Your local necromancer helps determine cause of rot, disease, and slow growth. Is your prize sow becoming barren just coincidence _or_ did your business rival buy a cheap hex to fuck your life up? Your local necromancer can tell! Is the wan harvest because of poor soil _or_ the harvest gods being displeased? Your local necromancer can tell!

 _That_ is Sildar—Darry at the time—for the farmers in and around Tre-Llew Ddion. Local necromancer, helper, friend.

It isn't until the Institute of Planar Research opens up that he even _considers_ another profession.

("What are you gon' accomplish there Darry? Here you've got a place, a job! What's some Big City _edyukayshun_ gon' give you _we_ can't?" His oldest younger brother asks before he leaves. Sildar doesn't have an answer then. He never will.)

The IPRE doesn't have a necromancy course—of _course_ they don't, thethey're a Big City school, so they condone the use of that class of magic—but Darry finds a spot in the Engineering course as a pregrad student. It's safe and easy and even if he's one of the oldest humans there, it doesn't matter coz none of them know he dabbles in the "dark arts". His little secret.

Not for long though.

The secretary for orientation ruins his nametag. It says _Barry_ instead of Darry. That's fine though, Sildar won't complain. He's not one to rock the boat. Barry it is.

Pregrad becomes graduate becomes teacher. Professor Hallwinter, head of Engineering. That's when the Light falls.

Not too long after the Light falls, IPRE begins work on the inter-planar starship. He isn't consulted on the design—he's not _that_ good yet, of course—but he watches as the school become a place for hope.

(He still doesn't talk about necromancy with many people. Merle Highchurch, a Pannite botany teacher, talks to him about various farming techniques and he accidentally lets slip. It's all good though, Merle can keep a secret. Besides, "the stigma around that is dumb as shit. Necromancy's as good a class of magic as Conjuration. Fuck the man!" That's a relief, a proverbial load off of Barry's shoulders, as it were. Merle and Barry become closer—as close as Barry becomes with others before the Hunger.)

When the list for the StarBlazter crew goes up—the name for the inter-planar ship is a _delight_ —Barry is horrified and surprised to find his name there, up top. Secondary engineer to Drew Davenport. An honor among honors. And, due to the way the StarBlazter's engine worked—utilizing Bond theories as fuel, spinning power from the Bonds between people, between the crew—Barry would have to get to know the rest of the crew.

The thought _terrifies_ him. He's never been a social person but—!

These would be people he'd be sharing a space with for _months_ upon _months_! He's going to need to get to know them in ways others wouldn't! The though exacerbates his anxiety to untenable levels. He breaks into cold sweats at the thought of it.

So he tries to avoid them best he can. It doesn't work, of course, because Merle is one of the crew members and he is _amazingly_ persuasive, but points for effort.

Through Merle he meets Magnus Burnsides, a young human hired on as the Security Officer. No magic to speak of—he says something along the lines of "my brain can't handle magic like it can thinking, I get all squiggly and then I vomit"—but he's got a big heart and is built like a teddy bear. Magnus doesn't bother laughing at Barry's anxiety, instead offering to paint his nails and talk about Planar Theory while they eat cookies.

Magnus introduces him to the twins, Lup and Taako—young( _??_ ) sun elf twins, chefs, and arcane specialists—and that's a godsdamned disaster immediately. Whenever he sees Lup he clams up, body locking down until he passes out from the tension. And Taako isn't much better, a prickly dude who prods and pokes in Barry's business. But they joke and call him Bluejeans. They don't mind when he slips into babbling about necromancy being an unfairly stigmatized school of magic. They laugh when he flubs up simple words, but it's never mean. He could probably live with them. They're okay.

Lucretia Efi is the other human on board. Like Magnus, she's young. _Untenably_ young. With Barry hovering around forty, she and Magnus combined _equal_ his age. It's _horrifying_. But she's soft spoken, a quiet girl with very little sharp edges. She's the ships chronicler. She doesn't know magic but she can feel it around her. She's ambidextrous and sharp witted and agrees with Barry about necromancy. That's _fine_ , he can handle that.

Captain Drew Davenport is a stern man on the surface but, beneath that, he cares so much. It's no wonder that his crew, the StarBlazter crew, is so scrumbled together. He found people that would work well together, not people that _looked_ like they were good for it. He has faith that they'll do great things. He believes in them—in _Barry_ —and that's more than _any_ of them could ask for.

They leave their home and it's destroyed. Two months become a century of resetting and running and fear. Barry and Lup become a couple, happy, together, while Taako and Lup begin to envelop others in their Us.

Then Lucretia—gods, he _hates_ that this happened—she makes them forget. Forget Lup, who left to fix her mistake. Forget their mission, the Hunger, the Light. Forget the Relics that they crafted with their own two hands. Forget the fact that he and his wife were liches, unkillable with their anchors—not _phylacteries_ , that was too cheesy and on the nose for them—being tied with Bonds to their family, their crew.

But Barry dies and _remembers_ and lives and _forgets_ and dies and lives and dies again. He tries to find her, even if he can't remember her. He tries to hide when he can.

And then _they_ remember. His friends, Magnus and Merle and Taako, help him remember. And Davenport and Lup and the world ends but it doesn't and—

He's easy to forgive, the twenty years Lucretia gave up a leveraging factor, but he won't ever forget. Never again. Not when he has his wife, his family, and his friends nearby. He'll never forget again.


End file.
